Digital Media Buzz > Interactive TV Gets An Educational Boost

Interactive TV Gets An Educational Boost

By Barbara Gengler

Kicking off a new partnership, Canoe Ventures and VCU Brandcenter are working with students on the latest technologies that will empower customers to interact with their televisions.

Through the partnership, a $10,000 scholarship fund has been created to challenge students to explore ground-breaking applications that will shape the future of advertising.

Canoe Ventures is funded by the six largest cable MSOs (Multiple System Cable Operators): Bright House Networks, Cablevision Systems Corp., Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable, totaling $150 million in investment.

VCU Brandcenter, which started in 1996, is the graduate advertising and branding program of the School of Mass Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University. “What students are really looking at is how TV will continue to be a part of the digital media world and that’s a kind of deceptive statement because television is already digital media, but it’s non-interactive for the most part today,” says Kelly O’Keefe, managing director of the VCU Brandcenter. “We’re looking at the interactive future of television as new technology comes on line that allows for user input and user engagement and we think that’s going to be a very interesting opportunity for television.”

O’Keefe says the students definitely are looking at how television will be affected by an increasingly interactive future and how it will link to other media. “One of the things in developing strategies is that media can often become much more powerful when they’re combined with other media,” he says.

“A good example of that is we’re seeing today areas in television and online where, for instance, CNN might have a Facebook feed connected to the Obama inaugural by creating a combination of two different media that are providing a lot more interaction for the user,” O’Keefe says.

The implications of these emerging technologies will help students get ahead in advertising. “We focus heavily on where industry and technologies are going,” O’Keefe says. “Social media, digital technologies — we’re big believers that all media is really new media in the right hands.”

The scholarship will be part of VCU’s normal scholarship program where the school looks at a combination of need and merit and a committee will award the scholarship.

The first scholarship will be awarded for the January semester and it will be an annual scholarship, which will be broken into two $5,000 awards for students, who will be notified this December.

“The process has already begun so there’s a lot of excitement about this collaboration,” O’Keefe says. “This is the kind of industry education partnership really makes sense in today’s world and where we can learn from each other and help advance the future of digital media.”

Zippy Aima, ABI Research industry analyst of digital media, says Canoe Ventures intends to develop advertising products and platforms that will allow operators to effectively expand their reach to subscribers.

The goal of this organization is to provide value and data to advertisers in terms of addressability and interactivity. The organization (along with CableLabs) has already released an advanced advertising specification, which defines standards that will allow cable companies to provide more interactive and VOD-based advertising, Aima says. “Canoe Ventures’ recent partnership with VCU Brandcenter is an indication of the industry’s commitment to interactive advertising and taking it to the next level,” Aima says. “Introducing advanced and interactive advertising into the institution’s curriculum will help prepare the students for advertising technologies that will have a positive impact on the overall pay TV market as consumers demand enhanced services and rich user experience.”